Tag Archives: Typhoon Yutu

Just three years afterTyphoon Soudelor, a Category 4 monster with sustained winds of 130 mph with gusts in excess of 160 mph, became the worst storm to strike Saipan and Tinianin the Northern Mariana Islandsin nearly 30 years,beleaguered citizens of the U.S. Trust Territory are facing another serious crisis.

Surprisingly, however, if early video is any indication, many of the larger buildings along the Saipan shore appeared to be in better shape than I expected, based on the early reports. To view the brief Oct. 26 Saipan KSPN2 News“Typhoon Yutu Round-Up,”please click here. .

On the other hand, global satellite images present a far starker view of Yutu’s destruction. To view the Weather Channel’s“Super Typhoon Yutu’s Destruction in Saipan, Tinian Seen in Before and After Satellite Photos,”please click here.

Typhoon Yutu’s 180 mph winds overturned cars, knocked down hundreds of power poles and left an island of thousands without a medical center and another without an airport. Buildings were reduced to haphazard piles of tin and wood; if a structure wasn’t made of concrete, one resident said, it was probably wiped out by the most powerful tropical cyclone to hit any part of the United States since 1935.

. . . According to figuresreleased by the Weather Underground website, Yutu was tied with the fifth-highest wind speed of any storm on record as it made landfall. Only a few storms, including 2013′s Super Typhoon Haiyan, which struck the Philippines, have been stronger, and even then not by much. For the United States, just one storm — the 1935 Labor Day hurricane that hit the Florida Keys — is believed to have been more powerful.

Damage from Super Typhoon Yutu is shown outside Glenn Hunter’s home on Saipan, on Oct. 25, 2018. As the typhoon crossed over the island, the walls shook in Hunter’s concrete home, a tin roof over the garage blew away and howling winds terrified his cats. Maximum sustained winds of 180 mph were recorded around the eye of Yutu, which passed over Tinian and Saipan early Thursday local time. (Courtesy Glen Hunter via AP.)

Everyone knows know about Hurricane Michael, which made landfall at Mexico Beach, Fla., as a high-end Category 4 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of 155 mph on Oct. 10, and has claimed at least 54 deaths, but if you blinked you’d miss the news aboutYutu. Because the fortunes of the approximately 55,000-plus indigenous people of the Trust Territory of the Mariana Islands, consisting mainly ofSaipanandTinian,present no immediate political benefit to the U.S. media establishment, network coverage of the tragedy has been scant.

Super Typhoon Yutu left major damage on the Northern Mariana Islands after a direct hit.

The entire island of Saipan suffered damage and it may take weeks to restore power to everyone.

The governor’s office confirmed one death and at least 133 injuries in Saipan.

In an Oct. 26 story, “Tinian destruction: 10 out of 10,”theSaipan Tribunereported, “On the smaller island of Tinian, which took a direct hit from Super Typhoon Yutu, most of the houses were destroyed, and even some concrete ones were reduced to rubble, resident Juanita Mendiola said.”

Recovery efforts were well under way by Oct. 29, and in a few parts of the island, power had been restored. To see the latest KSPN2 Newsreports, please click here.

Growing up in the Washington, D.C. area, October was always my favorite month, as its fresh, cool, blue days trumpeted the end of another hot, humid summer, but as we see, it can also be the cruelest month if you live in the wrong place.

“Our Lady of Mount Carmel intercede for All on Saipan and Tinian as they embrace their journey to Recovery,“ Saipan residents Evelyna and Carlos Shoda, spared from certain months without power, wrote from their temporary home in Fountain Valley, Calif. “Our Lady of Mount Carmel, pray for us.“

And Frances Sablan, secretary of the Amelia Earhart Memorial Monument Committee and a close friend of Marie Castro, its guiding light, wrote in understatement Oct. 25, “Si Yu’us Ma’åsi’! We need all the prayers to help us through this recovery phase!“

Just after midnight, Oct. 27, my prayers were answered when I received a brief email from Marie Castro: “Thanks for your prayers,” she wrote. “Allen [Marie’s nephew] came and shut all the shutters to secure the house from the typhoon, Yutu. I was in total darkness for two days. I did not have any damage around the house, everything is OK other than fallen trees along Navy Hill. I was reading the book [Truth at Last, presumably].”

With the recentnewsof Josephine Blanco Akiyama’s return to Saipan at age 92, I had been cautiously hopeful that some progress was being made there in favor of the planned Earhart Memorial Monument. But this worthy cause and all the controversy it brings will now be set aside for another time, as far more pressing matters occupy the unlucky citizens of Saipan, Tinian and the rest of the Mariana Islands.

Your prayers are needed and appreciated.

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Artist’s rendition of the proposed Amelia Earhart Memorial Monument, with a new location planned for the old Garapan Prison, where Amelia and Fred Noonan were held briefly by the Japanese in the summer of 1937.

The Second Edition of “Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last,” is a large 7″ by 10″ paperback offering 370 pages at the same low retail price of $19.95, and significantly less at Amazon.com. The book adds two chapters, a new foreword, several new subsections, the most recent discoveries, rare photos and a near-total rewrite to the mountain of overwhelming witness testimony and documentation presented in the first edition of “Truth at Last. ”

Even as a child, Amelia had the look of someone destined for greatness. In this photo, she seems to be gazing at events far away in time and space. Who can fathom it?

This is a priceless portrait of our heroine at the tender age of 7. She seems to be peering into timelessness, as if she can actually see the amazing adventures that are in store for her — and us. Who can fathom it?

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Amelia at Spadina Military Hospital, Toronto, Canada, circa 1917-’18

While visiting Muriel at St. Margaret’s College in Toronto in 1917, Amelia encountered three Canadian soldiers who had lost a leg, and decided, on the spot, to join the war effort. She enrolled in the Voluntary Aid Detachment and was assigned to the Spadina Military Hospital. “Sister Amelia soon became a favorite among the wounded and discouraged men,” Muriel wrote.

Arrival at Londonderry, Ireland, May 21, 1932

Earhart had spent the last 15 hours tossed by dangerous storms over the North Atlantic, contending with failing machinery and sipping a can of tomato juice to calm her queasy stomach. That day—May 21, 1932—she planned to end her journey at Paris’ Le Bourget airfield, where exactly five years earlier Charles Lindbergh had completed the first solo transatlantic flight. When her Vega’s reserve fuel tank sprang a leak and flames began engulfing the exhaust manifold, however, Earhart wound up navigating to a Northern Ireland pasture. From that moment , Amelia Earhart’s star shined brightest, and her like has never been seen since.

Acclaim at Londonderry

Another great photo of Amelia, as she prepares to take off from Derry, Northren Ireland, and fly on to London, where worldwide fame awaited. After a flight lasting 14 hours, 56 minutes during which she contended with strong northerly winds, icy conditions and mechanical problems, Earhart landed in a pasture at Culmore, north of Derry, Northern Ireland. The landing was witnessed by Cecil King and T. Sawyer. When a farm hand asked, “Have you flown far?” Earhart replied, “From America.” The site now is the home of a small museum, the Amelia Earhart Centre.

Summer 1960: The Saipan Truth comes out

The headline story of the May 27, 1960 edition of the San Mateo Times was the first of several stories written by ace reporter Linwood Day that set the stage for Fred Goerner’s first visit to Saipan in mid-June 1960 and led Goerner’s 1966 bestseller, “The Search for Amelia Earhart.” Day worked closely by phone with Goerner, and on July 1, 1960, the Earhart frenzy reached its peak, with the Times announcing “Amelia Earhart Mystery Is Solved” in a 100-point banner headline accross its front page.

This story appeared in the San Mateo Times “Family Weekly” news magazine on July 3, 1960. The sensational account revealed details of her life as an 11-year-old on 1937 Saipan, but the true picture of what she actually saw that day remains in question. Was it a seaplane or a landplane in trouble that landed at Tanapag Harbor?

Fred Goerner with witness Manual Aldan, Saipan, 1960

Fred Goerner with witness Manuel Aldan on Saipan, June 1960. Aldan was a dentist whose practice was restricted to Japanese officers in 1937, and though he didn’t see the American fliers, he heard much about them from his patients. Aldan told Goerner that one officer identified the white woman as “Earharto!” (Courtesy San Francisco Library Special Collections.)

The only bestseller ever penned on the Earhart disappearance, “Search” sold over 400,000 copies and stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for six months. In September 1966, Time magazine’s scathing review, titled “Sinister Conspiracy,” set the original tone for what has become several generations of media aversion to the truth about Amelia’s death on Saipan.

This story, which announced Thomas E. Devine’s Saipan gravesite claim, appeared in the San Mateo Times on July 16, 1960. Devine returned to Saipan in 1963 and located the gravesite shown to him by the Okinawan woman in August 1945, but did not share his find with Fred Goerner. Instead Devine planned to return to Saipan by himself, but he never again got the opportunity.

Thomas E. Devine, whose involvement with events surrounding the discovery and destruction of Amelia Earhart’s Electra 10E as a 28-year-old Army postal sergeant on Saipan in July 1944 shaped the rest of his life. Devine’s 1987 classic, “Eyewitness: The Amelia Earhart Incident,” is among the most important books about the Earhart disappearance ever penned.

Thomas E. Devine’s “Eyewitness: The Amelia Earhart Incident” (1987) is Devine’s first-person account of his eyewitness experiences on Saipan, where he saw Amelia Earhart’s Electra 10, NR 16020 on three occasions, the final time the plane was in flames. Devine’s book is among the most important ever penned in revealing the truth about the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.

On November 13, 1970, the Japan Times reported, for the first time, the shocking claims of Mrs. Michiko Sugita, who was told of Amelia Earhart’s execution on Saipan in 1937. Sugita, the eleven-year-old daughter of the civilian chief of police on Saipan in 1937, told the Japan Times in 1970 that Japanese military police shot Amelia Earhart as a spy there. Sugita, the first Japanese national to report Earhart’s presence on Saipan, corresponded for a time with Thomas E. Devine, but later went missing and his letters were returned, marked, “No such person, unknown.”

Mrs. Michiko Sugita, Japanese national, Earhart witness

Mrs. Michiko Sugita, whose account as told to the Japan Times in 1970 remains the only testimony from a Japanese national that attests to Amelia Earhart’s presence and death on Saipan following her July 2, 1937 disappearance. Sugitia corresponded with Thomas E. Devine for a few years in the mid-1970s before Devine’s letters were returned with the notation, “No such person. Return to sender.”

This story appeared at the top of page 1 in the July 13, 1937 edition of the Bethlehem (Pennsylvania)-Globe Times. “Vague and unconfirmed rumors that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan have been rescued by a Japanese fishing boat without a radio,” the report began, “and therefore unable to make any report, found no verification here today, but plunged Tokio [sic] into a fever of excitement.” The story was quickly squelched in Japan, and no follow-up was done. (Courtesy Woody Peard.)

Adm. Chester W. Nimitz: Fred Goerner’s most respected informant

Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, circa 1942, the last of the Navy’s 5-star admirals. In late March 1965, a week before his meeting with General Wallace M. Greene Jr. at Marine Corps Headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, Nimitz called Goerner in San Francisco. “Now that you’re going to Washington, Fred, I want to tell you Earhart and her navigator did go down in the Marshalls and were picked up by the Japanese,” Goerner claimed Nimitz told him. The admiral’s revelation appeared to be a monumental breakthrough for the determined newsman, and is known even to many casual observers of the Earhart matter. “After five years of effort, the former commander of U.S. Naval Forces in the Pacific was telling me it had not been wasted,” Goerner wrote.

Marshall Islands 50th Anniversary Commemorative Stamps, 1987

The independent Republic of the Marshalls Islands issued these four postage stamps to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Amelia Earhart’s landing at Mili Atoll and pickup by the Japanese survey ship Koshu in July 1937. To the Marshallese people, the Earhart disappearance is no mystery or rumor, but a stone cold fact.